The US military has agreed to pay $50 million in compensation after a software company complained that the US armed forces installed software without the necessary licenses.
According to a Washington Post report, in 2004 the US Army hired Apptricity to create an application that would allow it to track the location of its soldiers. The company delivered a “package” of server and device licenses for $4.5 million, and then (five years later) more were purchased.
However, according to Apptricity, the military proceeded to mass install the software, on nearly 100 servers and over 9,000 devices, which was discovered in June 2011, after a series of hardware reports. The company also says that the military also hired another company, Future Research Corporation, to make changes to Apptricity's software (replacing some copyrighted features) to ensure that it would not have to pay a fine in the event of a legal dispute.
Initially, Apptricity requested compensation of $225 million and the final settlement was $50 million. However, as pointed out in the Washington Post article, based on the prices charged to the US government by the company ($1.35 million for each server license and $5,000 per device license), the military is once again the winner, having achieved savings of 73% through "piracy.".
Source: naftemporiki.gr
